Organ harvesting

Organ harvesting refers to the removal, preservation and use of human organs and tissue from the bodies of the recently deceased to be used in surgical transplants on the living. Though mired in ethical debate and heavily regulated, organ donation in the United States has largely become an accepted medical practice.

Historically there has been contention about the legality and morality regarding organ harvesting. One of the earliest recorded examples of organ theft are the Burke and Hare murders in Edinburgh in 1828, where the victims bodies were to be used as cadavers in medical schools^[1] and the copycat London burkers in London in 1831. The modern view of organ harvesting is due in part to the more than 105,000 people on the waiting list for solid organ transplants. Experts suggest that each of us could save or help as many as fifty people by being an organ and tissue donor.

A main reason for organ harvesting is to do with the extreme difficulty with which organs can be preserved postmortem, usually requiring a brain dead but still functionally alive donor, and the long waiting lists for available organs. Historically organ harvesting did not occur in an organized manner: the practice was occasionally advanced as a theory into mysterious disappearances or murders, and is then advanced by sensationalist news reports, followed by word-of-mouth promotion as an urban legend in which the practice is linked with a nefarious underground network of organized crime, and also promoted in horror movies and thriller movies. The United Nations, working with the Council of Europe, has released a detailed study of the fact and the fictions surrounding organ theft.^[2]

Organ theft events

Organ harvesting being a general fiction, however, has not stopped some real-world entities from some larger organizations and governments from pursuing the practice for political or tactical reasons. In The Hunt: Me and War criminals, Carla Del Ponte claims that Kosovo Albanians smuggled human organs of kidnapped Serbs after the Kosovo war ended in 1999. The EU rule-of-law mission uncovered no evidence to back these claims up while no evidence was presented by the Serbian government.^[3]

It has been confirmed by news sources that the organs of a number of death row prisoners in China were, at least at one point, taken for transplant after their executions, on a for-profit basis, for both foreign nationals and Chinese nationals; it was unclear whether the prisoners had given their permission to have their organs harvested after death.^[4] The Chinese justice system is alleged to work very quickly for those sentenced to death, not allowing significant time for appeals, which then led to allegations that the entire justice system has been corrupted by a government approved system of organ theft. Until 2006 the Chinese government did not have a specific law in place outlawing the acquisition of organs without express consent; now such a law exists, but even with this new statute, other conflicting statutes remain, such as that which allows Chinese state prisons to use prisoners in whatever way that prison deems beneficial to the State. Meanwhile, in July 2006, former Canadian Secretary of State David Kilgour and Human Rights Lawyer David Matas published a controversial report concluding that "...large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners are victims of systematic organ harvesting, whilst still alive...".^[5]

In December 2009, Israel admitted that, in the 1980s and 1990s, there had been organ harvesting of skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from dead bodies of Israeli soldiers, citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute without the permission from relatives.^[6] The revelation was a consequence of the Aftonbladet-Israel controversy.^[7][8] Israel states that the institute in question ended such practice sometime around the year 2000.

On 6 August 2010, the Ukraine police arrested 12 people, some of them Israeli, in Ukraine on suspicion of selling human organs.^[9]

Organ sale

Although illegal in most countries, the sale of organs is common.^[10][11][12] Accurate statistics are hard to come by, but in March 2007, one estimate was that 5 to 10% of the world's kidney transplants involved compensation.^[13] Although many reports that this trade has involved coercion or kidnapping (thus becoming organ theft) have turned out to be just rumors,^[14] some cases have involved theft, for example the 2008 kidney ring run by doctor Amit Kumar in India.^[15]

Examples in fiction

• Organlegging (a reference to bootlegging) is a theme in several of Larry Niven's Known Space series.

• The post-apocalyptic film Repo! The Genetic Opera deals with the concept of organ theft being legalized, where assassins known as Repo men kill people for their organs when they fail to keep up with the payment of the organs they had purchased. Similarly, the future depicted in the film Repo Men features reclaimers of artificial organs, which are taken back from the recipient should they fail to keep up with their payments for the implantation surgery.

• The manga series Deadman Wonderland depicts prisoners being farmed for organs depending upon the results of a twisted slot machine, which is used for the purpose of removing an organ or body part (ie. heart, eyes, etc.) from an individual should they lose one of the matches that occur at the titular theme park.

• In the film Crank: High Voltage, the protagonist is subjected to organ theft by having his heart removed and he goes on a path of vengeance against those who stole his heart and replaced it with an artificial one.

• The flash cartoon series Charlie the Unicorn depicts the protagonist having his kidney stolen by the two unicorns who convince him to go on adventures with him, much to Charlie's chagrin.

• The music video for the song "I'm Only Human Sometimes" on the William Control album, Noir, is about organ theft. The video's plot follows William through a night on the town during which he meets two attractive women that drug him, seemingly sexually assault him, and remove what appears to be one of his kidneys. He wakes up the next morning crudely stitched up in the bath tub of a motel room, visibly in pain, and holding a note that advises him to call 9-1-1.

• Season 4 of US TV show Nip/Tuck is based around an illegal kidney (and on occasion other organs) harvesting network.

• In the movie Turistas many characters are the victims of an organ-theft network in Brazil.

• The films Coma and Death Warrant details organ harvestings as part of the black market trade.

• The Magic: The Gathering villains called Phyrexians, a group of flesh and metal beings, capture and occasionally harvest organs and body parts from their victims to repurpose them or steal body parts from other victims (eyes, limbs, etc.) and add them onto other Phyrexian monstrosities. One major example is the Blue Aligned Phyrexians led by Jin Gitaxias, who practices these acts frequently.

See also

• Human Tissue Authority
• Organ transplant
• Shichinin no Tomurai (Japanese dark comedy film which deals with organized organ theft)
• Aftonbladet-Israel controversy
• Yehuda Hiss

References

Further reading

• Marie-Monique Robin, Voleurs d'yeux (1995 Albert Londres Award)
• Joel Bast, How Claims Spread: Cross-National Diffusion of Social Problems, chapter: The Diffusion of Organ Theft Narratives
• Michael Parmly, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Hearing Before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights Washington, DC June 27, 2001
• Police Hunt for Doctor in Kidney-Snatching Ring CNN, January 29, 2008
• BBC News - Sellafield organ removal inquiry 18/04/2007
• The Epoch Times - New Witness Confirms Existence of Chinese Concentration Camp, Says Organs Removed from Live Victims
• CNN.com Law Center - UCLA suspends its Willed Body Program 09/03/2004
• Illegal Organ Trafficking Poses A Global Problem by The Huffington Post, July 24, 2009
• Tissue and Organ Harvesting, OMNI, omni.ac.uk
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